LCS Playoffs: Previewing Evil Geniuses vs FlyQuest

FlyQuest, LCS. Photo by Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games. /

We preview the first match of the LCS playoffs with Evil Geniuses taking on FlyQuest.

The LCS playoffs open up tomorrow with the first matches of the winner’s bracket. In the first game of the weekend, the surging Evil Geniuses will take on a steady FlyQuest team that stumbled down the stretch.

Evil Geniuses (10-8)

The Evil Geniuses certainly didn’t get off to the start they would have wanted in their return to the LCS. They ended the first round-robin below .500 and seemed like a team that was struggling to find their identity. They finally got their record back to even in Week 7 and finished the season on a 7-1 streak.

The story of this team is mid laner Daniele “Jiizuke” di Mauro; when he thrives the team wins and when he doesn’t the team struggles. The team does have plenty of veteran talent around their star mid laner, including a former World Champion ADC in Bae “Bang” Jun-sik and former LCS MVP in Dennis “Svenskeren” Johnsen, but they Jiizuke will be the player who carries or sinks Evil Geniuses.

FlyQuest (10-8)

On almost the opposite trajectory from Evil Geniuses, FlyQuest started off the split strong, finishing the first round-robin with a 6-3 record. Unfortunately, they struggled down the stretch and only won four of their last six games.

FlyQuest has been bolstered by the additions of mid laner Tristan “PowerOfEvil” Schrage and support Lee “Ignar” Dong-geun, who are two of their keys to success in the playoffs. They’re also bolstered by the improved play of jungler Lucas “Santorin” Tao Kilmer Larsen. However, they have had some instability in the top lane, recently replacing their long-time top laner Omran “V1per” Shoura with sub Colin “Solo” Earnest.

Head-to-Head

Evil Geniuses actually owns the season series, winning both games. The teams first met in Week 3, a game in which Jiizuke pulled out a pocket Malzahar pick into PowerofEvil’s Zoe. It was a fairly one-sided affair from beginning to end, with EG ending the game with a by-the-numbers Baron push at 31 minutes.

The second game in the series was another EG win, again on the back of a Jiizuke pocket pick (this time Taliyah). While PoE tried to match it with a pocket Ahri pick of his own, the story of this game was FlyQuest’s bot lane of Ignar and Jason “WildTurtle” Tran, who got dove and roamed on constantly and finished the game a combined 0/10/3.

Key Match-Up

It has to be the mid lane, where the two teams have their strongest members in Jiizuke and PowerofEvil. As noted above, Jiizuke has gotten the better of PoE in their two match-ups thus far, but the LCS playoffs are a different animal. One thing is for sure, expect to see plenty of off-meta picks on both sides of this match-up.

Prediction: EG wins 3-1

While I don’t know if we are going to see good Jiizuke or bad Jiizuke on Saturday, I have a lot more confidence in Evil Geniuses’ supporting cast than I do FlyQuest’s. While Santorin and Ignar have both been great, WildTurtle has been one of the worst ADCs in the LCS. We still don’t know for sure it will be Solo starting in the top lane (I would guess he is) but with such limited playing time with the main roster, you have to wonder how effective he would be.

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On the other hand, for EG Bang has been quite steady and top laner Kumo has shown huge improvement over the back half of the split. While EG’s supporting cast isn’t going to carry the game, I don’t think they’ll lose the team the game. FlyQuest has players who might actually cost them the game and knock them out of the LCS playoffs.

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